How do Web Developers set up websites and their work model

[Adonis4000]

I have a friend that needs a website and I want to take the responsibility of creating it. This raises a few questions about a developers relationship with a client. What if I was to treat my friend as a client?

 

How do you go about creating a website? I saw that website like WordPress offer a way to create websites but I don't really like it. I'd prefer to learn HTML and CSS. How do you guys go about this? How do you host websites for a client?

 

Also, this situation raises a few questions about my client relationship. Once I create the final website, do I get a single paycheck for the work done and every time they want something changed pay me a fee? Or do they pay me a standard monthly fee for the website? Who "owns" the website? Who pays for the hosting service? Do I take the responsibility of hosting the website and act as an intermediate for its payment, or do I give them access to the hosting service to pay it directly?

What would be your fees as an independent developer? (Lets say for a simple 6 page website). 

 

Of course, in my case he is friend so I'm still not going to charge him a lot, or a monthly fee, but I would still want to know how to treat future clients.

[HanZie82]

If you got 12 hours...

 

But its not that easy. So you will need to invest major time and effort into learning it. People spend years learning it.
Its a lot to learn, and thats just static like websites, want some more fancy stuff you would also need to learn some Javascript and PHP if you want to be fully competent in website building. But that's just the technical part.
One would also need a photo editor to edit ones pictures to the right size, aspect ratio and/or colors.

Then also comes the part of design, which is a whole different matter al together...
I would say start with video's like that, and make a test website to try things out.

And as to who owns what, thats just what you agree upon beforehand.
One would expect the one wanting the website paying for it. And the effort of creation might also want some reward of some sort.

What i personally found easiest, is that the one that wants a website pays for the hosting directly (and the website if applicable) and then give full admin access to the web-developer.

[Adonis4000]

9 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

And as to who owns what, thats just what you agree upon beforehand.

Yeah, I'm just asking what is the standard way of doing things in the industry. What would be a standard contract/agreement?

 

Also I happen to do have 12 hours to spare so I might actually watch that if it's good.

[HanZie82]

13 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

Yeah, I'm just asking what is the standard way of doing things in the industry. What would be a standard contract/agreement.

 

Also I happen to do have 12 hours to spare so I might actually watch that if it's good.

If its good (im not to sure) then its not just watching but also practical test etc.

 

 

edit:

If you want a website within weeks, keep looking at the Wordpress/SquareSpace things.

Even then if you want something more custom you would still need HTML, CSS, JS and PHP knowledge.
And that knowledge can (depending on the effort put into learning) years to attain.

[Eigenvektor]

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

What if I was to treat my friend as a client?

This is usually the best solution long term. Otherwise it's easy to fall into the "indefinite tech support for free" trap.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

How do you go about creating a website?

That depends a lot on what the client wants. If they want to have a simple website with content they can update on their own, using some form of CMS is usually the easiest. If they want a lot of custom stuff, creating something from scratch might work best. Though as time progresses you'll typically accumulate a lot of "templates" you can use and adapt as needed.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

I saw that website like WordPress offer a way to create websites but I don't really like it. I'd prefer to learn HTML and CSS. How do you guys go about this?

Again, really depends on what the client wants. For example we use Angular for most of our web apps and the page content is pretty much exclusively handled by Angular templates. We don't write any more HTML and CSS than necessary. It's tedious and boring and there are frameworks out there that handle all the cross-browser compatibility headaches for you already.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

How do you host websites for a client?

Depends. Some clients host stuff themselves. Others have contracts with us that detail how updates etc. are to be handled. The actual hosting happens elsewhere (e.g. AWS), because we don't actually have the necessary infrastructure or staff to provide anywhere near their reliability.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

Also, this situation raises a few questions about my client relationship. Once I create the final website, do I get a single paycheck for the work done and every time they want something changed pay me a fee? Or do they pay me a standard monthly fee for the website?

That's up to you. In many cases you'll have some contract with a customer that states what you'll be delivering. Payment may happen once the contract is complete or in increments (e.g. whenever a certain milestone is reached). The important part is to have a contract that details what is and isn't part of the final product, how much the pay is, whether payment happens as a lump sum or based on effort (e.g. hourly rate).

 

The more detailed the contract and/or specification is, the better, because it protects you against clients asking more and more without wanting to pay extra. It also protects the customer, because they know exactly what they'll get for their money and can insist on it being delivered if the final product doesn't live up to expectations.

 

Any changes to the contract or future additions or changes have to be renegotiated and paid for. If the customer wants to have some form of support or hosting, that would typically happen in the form of some monthly or yearly fees.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

Who "owns" the website?

Depends on the contract. E.g. if we build something specifically for a customer the customer may pay for the source code and everything, meaning they own it. If they want to buy a customized version of our product, we retain ownership and they just pay for the adjustments.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

Who pays for the hosting service?

The customer. A business is not a charity.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

Do I take the responsibility of hosting the website and act as an intermediate for its payment, or do I give them access to the hosting service to pay it directly?

If you handle hosting on behalf of the customer, you're typically responsible for the technical details of setting up hosting etc. The customer pays you to do so. You use some (or all) of that money to pay the hosting company. I would avoid a situation where two parties have administrative access, because that can easily lead to situation where the customer will blame you if they broke something. If only one party has access, it's clear who did it and is responsible for fixing it.

 

We also have customers who provide hosting on their own, but pay us to e.g. install the product or perform some maintenance. In that case the general operation is up to them.

 

58 minutes ago, Adonis4000 said:

What would be your fees as an independent developer? (Lets say for a simple 6 page website).

That depends a lot on your experience, the difficulty of the project, whether you retain ownership of the code (cheaper) or the code belongs to the customer (more expensive). Since you say you want to learn HTML and CSS, I assume you don't have much experience. In that case you'll not be able to compare your rates to that of a "professional".

 

In general, the rate should be enough to keep your business afloat (and ideally grow). Take into account how much money you need for your office, hardware, electricity, insurance, food … Then take into account how much money you want to have left once all of that is paid. The money you ask for needs to be able to cover all of that.

[SydneyBrokeIt]

There really isn't any one standard contract for this sort of thing - but you want to make sure you get this sorted ahead of time.  There should be *no* question who handles what before work even starts.